Monomania’s some heavy shit, wracked with longing and ultimatums and passive-aggression and aggressive-aggression and a monumentally shredding heartbreak.
Monomania is an example of focus and self-exploration; a treatise to the possibility of uncovering newness and value in what appears to be a bleak, postmodern junkyard where there’s nothing left to change.
Monomania is arguably their most imposing, and by far their most courageous, proving that Deerhunter have a frontman who’s willing to open up his soul to fit the demands of the stage.
An impishly brilliant 12-song set of scruffy garage rock with moments of dreamy shimmer, Monomania leaves no confusion about what sort of band Deerhunter are: one that won’t stoop to conquer.
Monomania's greatest accomplishment then is how well it incorporates the best elements of its predecessors without ever coming across as derivative or unoriginal.
Nothing seems to go as planned on Monomania, if there was ever a plan in place at all.
While Monomania as a whole is an unpredictable fulfillment of an unforeseen whim, it’s Deerhunter’s least revelatory and surprising album on a song-by-song basis.
Much like the band making it, this record’s a little weird, unpredictable, and off-putting.
Monomania demands an undivided attention and continuous play to truly see the beauty within its surrealism.
It’s the sound of Monomania that’s its biggest departure. It might be a step towards something more conventional structurally, but it’s anything but a step back – for Deerhunter, any move in the direction of convention is a dip of the toes in to the unknown.
Monomania somehow makes Deerhunter’s previous albums sound like they were controlled and constrained, as if it took four albums for Cox to finally be the shit disturber he’s always wanted to be.
Monomania often feels like both a figurative and literal attempt to write a new first record: the band don’t exactly sound young again, but they do sound energised, and certainly this is far and away their loudest set since TIUF.
Deerhunter’s latest is very tricky to describe whilst remaining sensible and within normal scopes of reason.
For all their experimental tangents, they've always been able to write a decent hook. So maybe Bradford Cox's monomania is just that – an ongoing obsession to carve Deerhunter's future place as one of the great American rock'n'roll bands.
Instead of transcend, which is a totally Weird Era Cont. thing to do, Monomania is “avant-garde” in a simpler way, acting meta to rock collection, pooling resources and then declaring them.
What it is, is a fine follow-up to 2009’s Halcyon Digest and another example of what can happen when a brilliant songwriter retreats into his own head and comes out with visions of monsters.
It may not reach the same creative highs or artistic wholeness of their previous releases, but in its own right, it can be just as enjoyable.
Taking nearly three years to record and release Monomania, the longest span between albums during Deerhunter’s existence, it is sparser sonically than many had expected. This isn’t a slight on the band, but a nod to their ability to shift focus and still please a devoted yet critical following.
It’s a cagey, manic record that tethers the band’s new-American muscle to Cox’s longstanding self-immolation.
By turns raw and reflective, Monomania is about shaking things up; it's not as grand or cohesive as Microcastle or Halcyon Digest, but with repeated listens, its quick shifts in sound and mood feel more like different sides of the same coin than a split personality.
Monomania will be remembered as the album where Deerhunter veered from their carefully acquired sound as opposed to constructing a more pronounced encapsulation of it.
Fans who’d grown to love the smoother sounds – saxophones and all – of predecessor Halcyon Digest might be in for a surprise, but Monomania retains those same Deerhunter kernels if you’re willing to forage.
What we might say is that the Atlanta group’s new LP puts the harsh in predecessor ‘Halcyon Digest’’s mellow – but the raspy sonics can’t mask some of their most shrug-worthy songs to date.
As unconventional in approach as ever, the set extrapolates from their previous ventures and results in a confident and competent continuation of established qualities.
Whereas both Deerhunter and Atlas Sound albums typically reflect the obsessive brilliance and meticulous pathos of Cox's personality, there's few signs of either on Monomania, which is in dire need of a little less impulse and a bit more OCD.
This seems like they were trying to catch on the sound of the garage rock revival that was already dead by this time
There are some fantastic tracks here but a handful of these songs are just flat-out awful.
Neon Junkyard - 3/5
Leather Jacket II - 4/5
The Missing - 3/5
Pensacola - 3/5
Dream Captain - 4/5
Blue Agent - 3/5
T.H.M. - 4/5
Sleepwalking - 4/5
Back to the Middle - 5/5 ❤
Monomania - 3/5
Nitebike - 4/5
Punk (La Vie Antérieure) - 4/5
"Monomania" after all these years, is a fine record, but one that does not hold the lasting impact of the records before it, and doesn't feel nearly as tight as the following "Fading Frontier". My biggest issues come down toe the execution of this album and it's sound. A more garage-esque and lo-fi sound isn't *inherently* bad, but Deerhunter drown much of their vocals, melodies, and riffs out in the distortion and lo-fi sound, to the point where it makes the album feel very ... read more
deerhunter's pivot to swaggering, fuzzed-out garage rock right after putting out halcyon digest, arguably their most beautiful album, seemed odd at the time but makes sense in retrospect. after reaching such a point of refinement in their sound, on monomania they went in the opposite direction towards rawness and punk grit, and it's a sonic direction i really enjoy
With Monomania, Deerhunter follows up their most beloved album in the melancholic and wistful Halcyon Digest, with one of the most manic rock albums of the 2010s. In this album, Bradford's songwriting is at its' most creatively unhinged and abstract - schizophrenically jumping from lo-fi, abrasive garage rock to melancholic jangle pop at a flip of a dime - the peak being the blaring, cacophonous title track that spends half of its runtime with revving, noisy guitars backing up Bradford's ... read more
1 | Neon Junkyard 2:51 | 79 |
2 | Leather Jacket II 3:09 | 74 |
3 | The Missing 3:40 | 87 |
4 | Pensacola 4:00 | 68 |
5 | Dream Captain 3:01 | 77 |
6 | Blue Agent 3:29 | 74 |
7 | T.H.M. 4:18 | 83 |
8 | Sleepwalking 3:08 | 86 |
9 | Back to the Middle 2:36 | 86 |
10 | Monomania 5:19 | 78 |
11 | Nitebike 4:16 | 62 |
12 | Punk (La vie antérieure) 3:27 | 76 |
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#25 | / | The Guardian |